Keeping a Pure Mind

If we are going to have a peaceful life, if we are going to have a tranquil life, if we're going to enjoy happiness and fulfillment, if we're going to have the kind of joy that causes our heart to rejoice and gives us the freedom to serve God gladly and happily and without constraint, then we have to have a clear conscience. You'd probably never steal a car or falsify an insurance claim or cheat on your taxes or your spouse. You might never let a day go by without studying God's Word.

And there may be a long and commendable list of things you'd never actually do. But what about the things you think about doing? How are you at controlling your thoughts, that aspect of your life where compromise is easier? That's John MacArthur's focus today on Grace to You in a message called Keeping a Pure Mind. Whether you've found yourself battling jealousy, lust, bitterness, whatever it is, I urge you to be honest with yourself and take a hard look at the hidden sins that could be hindering your relationship with Christ and with others.

And with that, here's John. Turn, if you will, to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. Let me just read verse 12 to you to set the context for a discussion of this matter of conscience. Paul writes, "'For our proud confidence is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world and especially toward you.'" Now you remember that the apostle Paul was being assaulted as to his integrity, as to his righteousness, as to his authority, as to his credibility, as to his effectiveness.

He was being attacked on every front. And in defense of himself, he appeals to the highest court. The highest court that is on earth, apart from God Himself, is conscience. He doesn't ask for the testimony of some other men to come to his aid.

He doesn't ask for some group to write a letter of commendation. He simply says this, "'Whatever you may be saying, our proud confidence is this, the testimony of our conscience.'" And his conscience was affirming that he was holy and he was godly.

He was sincere. He had conducted himself properly in the grace of God in the world and toward the Corinthians. Conscience then is the highest court on earth. Conscience is the soul's warning system. It is conscience, according to Romans 2.15, which either accuses us or excuses us.

That is, it either affirms us as being good and righteous and holy, or it indicts us as being evil and sinful and wicked. And frankly, conscience is the best critic because it knows the innermost secrets of our heart, and nobody else does except for God. If we are going to have a peaceful life, if we are going to have a tranquil life, as Paul called it, a quiet and peaceable life, if we're going to enjoy happiness and fulfillment, we're going to have the kind of joy that causes our heart to rejoice and gives us the freedom to serve God gladly and happily and without constraint, then we have to have a clear conscience. That should be really the desire and the goal of every believer, to be able to say what Paul said, you can bring all the accusation against me you want, but the proud testimony of my conscience is that I am living in holiness and godly sincerity. We want to experience that kind of affirmation from our conscience, and that's challenging because sin pervades us, all of our inmost being.

Now I want to go a little bit deeper into this because I'm very concerned about it for all of our lives, and I want to just ask a few questions this morning and try to answer them so we can dig a little deeper into this. The first question is what is sin? Let's get some kind of a clear idea of what sin is. Sin according to Scripture is, 1 John 3, 4, the transgression of the law. That is to say, sin is any violation of God's law. Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, says the New American Standard in that same verse, and sin is lawlessness. It is a violation of God's law. Any lack of conformity to the perfect moral standard of God is sin. Now the central demand of God's law is this. What is the first commandment?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, right? And the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself. So the epitome of all sin is to violate those two. The epitome of all sin then is to fail to love God.

That is the primary violation. And it shows up when John 16 says that the Lord's going to send the Holy Spirit and He will convict the world of sin. What is the sin? Of sin because they believe not on Me. In other words, that's the partner to loving not the Lord is loving not the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why 1 Corinthians 16, 22 says, if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be damned. So the ultimate sin, the epitome of sin, the summation of sin is lack of love for God, lack of love for Christ. That is the epitome of all sin.

That is the summation of all sinfulness. The carnal mind, Romans 8, 7 again, is not subject to the law of God, and it can't be. So an unregenerate person cannot keep the law of God, and therefore he sins and sins and sins and sins, and the compelling sin that leads the parade is lack of love for God, lack of love for Christ, and along with it the attendant love for self which manifests pride.

Our natural hatred of the law is such that even knowing what the law demands does nothing but stir up more disobedience. Listen to what Paul wrote. The sinful passions are aroused by the law. I would not have come to know sin except through the law. I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, you shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment produced in me, coveting of every kind, Romans 7, 5 to 7. Paul says, I read about a sin, and then I knew what it was, and then I saw myself doing it. Rather than the law of God helping me to defeat sin, the law of God just aroused sin. The more sins I learned about, the more things my heart desired to commit. Such is the sinner's penchant for sin that the more he learns about God's law, the more he sins.

The law's not going to help him. The law's just going to excite sin. In fact, Romans 1, verse 32 says, I suppose the sum of it all, even though they know the law of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but they give hearty approval to those who practice them. They know the law of God, and they know it leads to death, but they do it anyway, and they applaud the others who do it.

Amazing. Now our entire culture today reflects this passion for sin. We live in a culture where the passion is now legitimate.

In some cultures, it isn't, and so there are social restraints on it, but not in ours. Our entire culture reflects this passionate love for sin, and nobody wants to seem to hinder it. People love their sin, and they will go to extreme ends to justify and rationalize it. And as long as they do that, they damn themselves, right?

Because if you don't define the disease properly, you're never going to come to the proper cure. You can't come to salvation unless you understand sin. Obviously then this kind of thinking is deadly and damning to those who are deceived by it, but it is also true, and this is where I want to move at this moment.

We don't have much time left. This kind of thinking, and this is what concerns me, this kind of thinking has invaded the thinking of Christians. It has. Christians are casualties to the culture's redefinition of human behavior. Churches are. Churches which once would not tolerate adultery and fornication and homosexuality and lying and cheating and whatever other kinds of thing, very tolerant of it now. Churches that once would want to confront sin don't confront it anymore.

We've all fallen into the psychological game playing of self-esteem and ego building. This is typical in all the movements of the Christian church. It isn't in every church, but it's certainly where the thrust is.

And if you speak against it, you're really anathema. We have allowed the world to redefine God's moral law and even to redefine God's character and make Him more tolerant of sin than He is. Constant exposure then to the Word of God is essential. I'll tell you folks, in a time like this, what churches need more than they need anything else is the constant exposure to God's divine standard. What people desperately need, constant exposure to the Word of God, which is the only thing, listen to this, that's going to keep you sensitive to the divine morality week after week after week as you're assaulted by the other stuff. When we need that so desperately to keep our sensitivity to God's standard and to true holiness and true purity, churches are jettisoning that in favor of entertaining their people.

It's an amazing time in which we live. Now I want to ask a second question. We'll see how far we get. What sin is the most serious? We know what sin is. It is any violation of the law of God, and we're never going to be sensitive to sin unless we are constantly made sensitive to the law of God, and you do that through the teaching of the Word.

But let's go a little deeper. What is the most serious sin? What sin is most serious?

And I'll tell you what the answer is. The medieval theologians had it right. It's the sins of the mind. It's the sins of the mind. Many people who won't do evil deeds are nevertheless boldly evil in their thoughts.

They won't act out evil things because there's peer pressure and there are compelling reasons not to, but they are very involved in evil in their minds. A man who, for example, abstains from fornication for fear of getting caught might convince himself that it's all right to indulge in his own mind in salacious fantasies because he thinks no one will ever discover such a private sin. The fact of the matter is the sin he deliberately entertains in his mind may be a thousand times more evil than anything he would ever think of doing before others.

And Scripture says his guilt is the same before God as if he acted it out. That's why his conscience is so demanding, so relentless. What should be going on in our minds? What should be going on in the deepest recesses of our minds and hearts?

What should be happening there? I'll tell you what, worship and love to God. Worship and love to God. When we were saved, we were saved to be true worshipers.

The Lord saved us in order that we might be made true worshipers. Listen to this, to sin in the mind then is to desecrate the very sanctuary where our highest and best worship should be taking place. So, cultivating sins of the mind not only defiles the mind, but it displaces worship for which we were saved.

And there again, it can be defined as a form of blasphemy. Relatively easy sometimes to confess and forsake deeds of sin, words of sin, but the sins of our thought life go unconfessed more than any other kind. They are the sole blackening sins.

They are the character damaging sins. They work directly against the conscience, and there is the conscience fighting with all its worth against this onslaught. That's why the Old Testament says in Proverbs 4.23, watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. But, you know, beyond conscience, I have to say that God knows our hearts. Acts 15, 8 says God knows our hearts. 1 John 3, 20 says God is greater than our heart and knows all things. David wrote, thou dost understand my thought from afar and art intimately acquainted with all my ways. So God knows whether we have a lusting, coveting, angry, hostile, selfish, proud heart that is cultivating all of those sins of thought or whether or not our heart is given over to worship to Him. Psalm 44, 21 says, would not God find this out? For He knows the secrets of the heart. Jesus told the Pharisees in Luke 16, 15, you are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts. That which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.

And you know something? What's going on in your heart is the litmus test of your character. Proverbs 23, 7, as he thinks within himself, so is he.

Proverbs 6, 12, a worthless person, a wicked man, is the one who with perversity in his heart devises evil continually. You want to know what you really are? Take a look at your heart.

Take a look at the inside. For as in water, face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects man. Proverbs 27, 19.

External behavior is not an accurate gauge of your character. The thoughts of your heart reveal the truth. The thoughts of your heart are only known to God and your conscience. And beloved, it is so crucial that we cultivate a pure life so that we can enjoy the testimony of a clear conscience.

And you know the longer you learn the Word and the more you are exposed to the Word and the more your heart is filled with its truth, the greater will be your love and your worship toward God and the cleansing of that is going to affect the clear conscience. I honestly don't know how men can possibly feed their thought life, filth and foul things and obscenities and wicked things and things which displease God and stand and minister without literally being assaulted by their conscience. Job's comforters, you remember them? They came to him and they falsely accused him and there wasn't anything in his life they could accuse him of, right? You remember Job. He was more righteous than any other man. So what are they going to accuse him of?

I'll tell you what. They accused him of a dirty thought life. Zophar came and said to him, Job 20 verses 12 and 13, evil is sweet in his mouth and he hides it under his tongue. Though he desires it and will not let it go, he holds it in his mouth. In other words, he's really wicked on the inside.

You don't see it and you don't hear it, but he's all foul on the inside. The picture he painted of the evil thinker is vividly true. Evil thoughts are like candy to them. To the evil thinker, they derive great satisfaction from their imaginary iniquities. They savor their evil fantasies. They relish them like a choice morsel of sweetness under their tongue. They roll them around in their imagination. They return to the same wicked musings from which they can glean illicit pleasure over and over again. They mull them over like an animal chewing the cut, bringing up the favored evil thoughts time and time again to react anew in the mind. This is what they accused Job of, but so far misjudged Job.

Job had carefully guarded himself against that. This is what he said in Job 31, 1, I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze at a virgin?

I don't do anything. I don't look in any direction that's going to cultivate an evil thought. He knew God was the audience to his thoughts. He says this, Does he not see my ways and number all my steps? If I have walked with falsehood and my foot has hastened after deceit, let him weigh me with accurate scales and let God know my integrity. And then Job denied that his heart had followed his eyes. He denied that his heart had been enticed by another woman. That would be a lustful crime, he says, an iniquity to be punished by judges. To hide iniquity in the bosom, he said, would be to cover one's transgression like Adam. The very thought appalled his righteous heart. Well, Job was very aware of the danger of sinful thoughts. He consciously, deliberately set a guard on his heart to avoid such things.

And then you know what else he did? He even offered a sacrifice to God just in case his children sinned in their hearts. When the days of feasting had completed their cycle, that Job would sin and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.

This Job did continually. Concern not only about his own thought life, but the thought life of his own family. That's why the Lord said, There's no one like him on the earth.

He's a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil. So this whole matter of sins of thought has to be dealt with if we're going to deal with the conscience, if we're going to liberate our conscience and enjoy peace and joy and happiness and bliss in Christian experience. If you want to quiet your noisy conscience, you've got to deal with your thought life.

Well, maybe I better just quickly finish in two minutes. There are three ways the mind engages in sin. I'll just mention them and then I'll stop. Sins of remembering first, to cherish the memory of sins past, to bring back a lurid memory of a bygone sin is to repeat the sin all over again. I'll tell you, I grieve when I know that young impressionable people in their teenage years are going to go sit in a movie theater and watch people who are 18 feet high in vivid drama carrying out sexual activities and assume that those images may remain in the minds of those young people forever, at least in this life. You can't get out of them.

You can't dismiss them. And Satan can cycle you back through those, and your flesh as well can do that. And this isn't unique to sexual sins. Some people love to rehearse the memories of the time they got angry and poured out vengeance on somebody they resented, or the time they lied and got away with it, or they relished the time they cheated on their income tax. All kinds of temptations come from memory. Satan will try to take you back through the garbage of your past, and once you implant a lurid image in your mind, you can't take it away.

It's there. So one way we sin in the mind is through remembering sin in the past. Secondly, sins of scheming. The mind, like we saw in James, begins to lust, and it spins its desire into the imagination and develops the full fantasy. And it schemes and plots and plans the presumptuous, premeditative sin. And then it becomes the third kind, imaginary sin. The scheming could actually end in a real action of sin, but there are sins of imagining, purely imaginary sin, committing adultery in the heart, murdering in the heart, coveting in the heart, being discontent with what you have, with your place in life, daydreaming about being married to someone else, musing about a luxury that you want in your life, indulging gluttony in an imaginary binge. Literally millions of people live in this kind of fantasy of sin.

And you know what I believe? You heard this theology of positive confession? I believe for the most part it's nothing but fantasy sinning. It is not godly, it is not virtuous, and it is not faith.

To say, I want a new Rolls-Royce or a new Cadillac or a new house or a better job or more money and I'm going to believe God for that is not a righteous act of faith. It is an iniquity. It is a fantasy sin. It is a lust.

It is covetousness. And so the mind can sin by remembering, by scheming for sins in the future, and by developing imagination. The psalmist said, created me a clean what?

Heart, O God, so that He could have a clear conscience. Let's bow in prayer. Now while your heads are bowed in this closing moment, let me just have you listen to what I say and then we'll close in prayer. How are you going to deal with the problem of sins of thought? First, confess it. Identify it and forsake it, whether it's immorality or anger or vengeance or bitterness or covetousness, discontent.

Secondly, refuse to entertain that thought. Make a covenant with the Lord to think on things that are honorable and right and pure and lovely and good. Then feed on the word which, when hit in the heart, prevents sin. And then avoid evil attractions.

Don't expose yourself to things that provoke sins of thought. And then cultivate the love of God. It is my prayer, my desire for you, that you will glorify God. You will honor your Savior. You will enjoy the blessing, the triumph and bliss of a clear conscience, and that you'll be able to say with Paul, our proud confidence is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity we've conducted ourselves in the world.

What a testimony. Father, work that in every heart. Cleanse every heart. Thank you that forgiveness is available.

And it's not just a feeling, it's a fact. Given to one who asks, for if we confess, you forgive. Create in us a clean heart, O God.

For Christ's sake. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John's been the pastor of Grace Community Church since 1969. He's also chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, and he's titled, Today's Lesson, Keeping a Pure Mind. John, as you wrapped up your message in that quick list you gave of practical steps for dealing with sins in the mind, you exhorted us to feed on the Word. You said, When we hide it in our heart, that prevents sin.

So talk about the specifics of that process. How does taking in God's Word translate into sinning less? Well, it's a simple principle. The Bible says, As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. You're a product of your thoughts.

And whatever dominates your thoughts is what shows up in your behavior. That's why James says, Sin conceives in the heart, and it's conceived in the heart, and then it shows up in the action. So that's Paul's encouragement in Philippians 4.8, isn't it?

Whatever is pure and true and good, think on these things. So when the Word of God saturates your mind, when your thoughts are scriptural thoughts, the Spirit of God brings those thoughts to your mind. That becomes a barrier to sin. You can't get very far into some temptation before your conscience is reacting to divine truth which is buried deep in your heart, truth from the Word of God, and your conscience is calling a halt to what you're doing, telling you to stop. That's the function of the Word of God hidden in your heart, sound doctrine. The conscience reacts to that and becomes a warning system.

So how do you do that? How do you get the Word in your heart? Well, I would suggest if you don't have a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible, you need to get one. It includes not only the full text of the Bible, but 25,000 footnotes on every page below the Scripture text. You're going to find an explanation of that text so you know what it means, explaining everything with all the backgrounds, culture, geography, everything you need to know. The notes don't force a doctrinal system onto you, but they tell you what the Bible says and what it means, and that shapes your doctrine.

It's an important thing to have a tool like this on your own. It brings Bible reading to life. So you can choose a New American Standard translation, which I use, New King James English Standard Version ESV. Prices on many items, including the MacArthur Study Bible, are currently reduced 25 percent. The sale ends next Friday, June 18. Take advantage of our reduced prices. Order now. The MacArthur Study Bible can help anyone get more out of their personal devotions.

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To find one that's right for you, call 800-55-GRACE or order online at gty.org. Also, while you're online, remember you can download any of John's 3500 sermons, including today's, free in MP3 or transcript format. You can also download the Grace To You app. It gives you access to any of John's sermons wherever you take your smartphone. And make sure to check out the Grace To You blog. Every week, John and the staff write about some of the most discussed issues in the church today. All of that and more is free at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the staff, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace To You television this Sunday, and then be here next week when John answers questions that you probably have about homosexuality in the Bible. That's the title of the study he launches on Monday. Be here for that. It's 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.